Penn State Hockey defeats Canisius, winning season opener 5-2
Penn State Men's Hockey team opened up their season with a home game against Canisius on Friday night, winning by a final score of 5-2.
Jimmy Dowd Jr., Ture Linden, Ryan Kirwan and Connor MacEachern each had multi-point games.
In the first game, the new players are already making a big impact for the Nittany Lions.
Ashton Calder and Linden both recorded their first points as Nittany Lions.
Calder scored the first goal of the season on the Nittany Lions’ second power play, changing the game's momentum. Less than two minutes later, sophomore Kirwan scored, giving Linden his first point as a Lion.
Freshman Carter Schade had big hits throughout the game.
“He’s a big guy, so I like to see him get aggressive,” Dowd said.
While Nittany Lions had 19 shots on goal in the second period, it was scoreless. The Lions killed off a penalty to start the period, and Liam Souliere kept Canisius from scoring with ten saves.
While the Lions struggled to score in the second period and Canisius came within one 2:45 into the third period, they came back strong when Dowd and MacEachern scored even-strength goals.
When Canisius was back on the power play with six minutes left in the third, Kevin Mastrodonato scored, bringing them within two.
With 1:40 left in the game, Canisius pulled their goalie to make a comeback, but Wall scored to secure the Nittany Lion's 5-2 win.
In the third period, the Nittany Lions' penalty-kill struggled as they let up Canisius only two goals of the game.
“I think the obvious thing was our clears. We had a couple of chances to get the puck up the ice, myself included, and some that could have prevented goals,” Linden said.
The 5-2 win over Canisius was a total team effort, with all five goals scored by different players and nine players recording points. Souliere had 33 saves recording a .994 SV%.
With six penalties in the first game of the back-to-back series; Tomorrow night's 6 pm game will be one you don’t want to miss!